Khomeini

Khomeini remains a mystery to this day: the fashion-conscious ayatollah sang of wine and love in elegant poems, combined mysticism with classical erudition and won over liberals and leftists in his Parisian exile. Was he really so complex? Was a lot of him mere pretending? Or did he simply not get emotionally involved? When a journalist asked him how he felt on his return to Iran after fifteen years in exile, he simply replied: "Nothing! Without any emoitons he burned the youth at the front and had political opponents executed. Katajun Amirpur tells vividly and in the context of Iranian history the life of Khomeini from his childhood in a provincial town to his death in Tehran. She introduces his most important teachers, companions and works and explains how he turned a traditionally apolitical religious world upside down in just a few years. Even more than thirty years after his death, Khomeini still holds sway over Iran: even members of the opposition claim his true heritage for themselves, as Katajun Amirpur shows at the end of her gripping book.